Strategies that involve focused listening and practice are key to learning new material quickly, and looking closely at song structure can lessen the amount of time it takes you to get from first listen to a strong, quality performance. Read the post.

If you’re in a situation where you have to learn lots of new music in a very short time, these tips can help you develop a strategy so you can tackle the task and perform with confidence. Read the post.

You may think musical creativity exists and flourishes outside the bounds of habit and structure, but the truth is, you work best when you adhere to a stable routine and a healthy lifestyle. Read More.

Your audience wants to respond, they just don’t know what you want them to do – they don’t know what’s going through your head when you’re on the stage – so you have to use verbal, visual, and musical cues to lead them where you want them to go. Read More.

Being intentional with different visual presentations for the variety of moods your songs invoke is part of what Tom Jackson calls changing the pressure on your audience during your live performances. “I’m not talking about acting or choreography, I’m talking about thinking, “What should this song look like?'” Read more.

When people come to me for band practice tips, one of the questions I get asked a lot is, “What’s too much rehearsal? We want to keep it spontaneous.” Well, spontaneous is one thing, and winging it is another. And most people wing it. When you’re making it up as you go onstage, instead of in rehearsal, you’ll never be great, consistently. Read more.

Becoming a great musician isn’t easy, but avoiding these mistakes will increase your odds for success. Follow this advice and you’ll improve as a musician. First, as Malcolm Gladwell eloquently states in his book The Outliers, anyone wanting to be good at their craft must put in their 10,000 hours of practice. Read more.

Most bands, when they rehearse, even for a big show, will rehearse for a couple of days, run through the songs to make sure they’re “tight,” work out the musical parts, and then go out onstage and hope something good will happen. They have no idea what they’re trying to accomplish. Read more.